Ada Palmer

The daughter of computer engineer Douglas Palmer and artist Laura Higgins Palmer, Ada was born in Washington, D.C. but grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, where she attended Key School. She began her undergraduate education at age 15 for two years at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and then transferred to Bryn Mawr College, where she received a Bachelor of Art in history in 2001.{{Cite web |last=Palmer |first=Ada |title=Curriculum Vitae |url=https://www.adapalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/AdaPalmer-CVc.pdf}} She then obtained a Master of Arts and a doctorate in history at Harvard University in 2003 and 2009, respectively.{{cite news |title=Ada Palmer: Beyond the Exponential Age |url=https://locusmag.com/2018/05/ada-palmer-beyond-the-exponential-age/ |access-date=February 11, 2022 |work=Locus Online |date=May 14, 2018}}{{cite magazine |last1=Barber |first1=Gregory |title=Ada Palmer and the Weird Hand of Progress |url=https://www.wired.com/story/ada-palmer-sci-fi-future-weird-hand-progress |access-date=February 11, 2022 |magazine=Wired}}

Following a stint at Texas A&M University from 2009 to 2014, Palmer began teaching at the University of Chicago.{{cite web|last1=Jason|first1=Heller|title=Science, Fiction And Philosophy Collide In Astonishing 'Lightning'|url=https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476483675/science-fiction-and-philosophy-collide-in-astonishing-lightning|website=NPR|date=May 10, 2016 |accessdate=May 2, 2017|ref=Heller 2017}} She was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago from 2014 to 2018, and has been an associate professor at the institution since 2018.

As a scholar, Palmer researches and teaches about the Renaissance period. She teaches a class on the Italian Renaissance, "The Italian Renaissance: Dante, Machiavelli, and the Wars of Popes and Kings", known by the students as "pope class" or "pope LARP".{{Cite news |last=Graham |first=Ruth |date=2025-05-06 |title=‘The Only Person in the World Claiming to Be the Pope Right Now’ |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/us/conclave-pope-class.html |access-date=2025-05-07 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} In the class, students reenact the 1492 papal conclave, complete with secret meetings, betrayals, and a final vote conducted in full costume.{{Cite news|url=https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/4/18/uncommon-interview-hugo-award-nominee-ada-palmer/|title=Uncommon Interview: Hugo Award Nominee Ada Palmer|work=The Chicago Maroon|first=Stephanie|last=Palazzolo|access-date=July 18, 2017|archive-date=June 30, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170630041329/https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/4/18/uncommon-interview-hugo-award-nominee-ada-palmer/|url-status=dead}} In an interview, Palmer discussed her experience with the class, suggesting that students have a lot of favorable biases about this period despite its darker underside."[https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/096-progress Progress]", [https://www.youarenotsosmart.com You Are Not So Smart], #96.

Palmer co-authored The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance: A Brief Guide with James Hankins in 2008. Her own first book, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, was published in 2014. Palmer holds that the Lucretius poem De rerum natura, rediscovered in the Renaissance, could be the first document offering a profane worldview; that is, the possibility to describe how the universe works without any divine influence. This theory has implications for the development of political science as well as other secular worldviews. Palmer and Hankins also argue that Lucretius's ideas directly influenced Niccolò Machiavelli and utilitarianism, because of the ways in which his theories helped them create an ethics working per se, without any external, godly influence.{{cite news|last1=Farell|first1=Henry|title=The rediscovery of this writer in the Renaissance opened the way to the modern world (and, more important, the invention of political science)|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/22/the-rediscovery-of-this-writer-in-the-renaissance-opened-the-way-to-the-modern-world-and-more-importantly-the-invention-of-political-science/|accessdate=May 4, 2017}}

Palmer's first novel, Too Like the Lightning, the first of the Terra Ignota series, was published in 2016, and was a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Awards. It has been described as a rational adjacent book,{{cite web |author=Eneasz Brodski |date=December 8, 2016 |title=Interview – Ada Palmer (Too Like The Lightning) |url=http://www.hpmorpodcast.com/?p=1782 |accessdate=May 2, 2017 |website=The Methods of Rationality Podcast}} a work influenced both by science-fiction and historical genres,{{cite web |last1=Farell |first1=Henry |date=May 10, 2016 |title=What's so brilliant about Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning |url=http://crookedtimber.org/2016/05/10/whats-so-brilliant-about-ada-palmers-too-like-the-lightning/ |accessdate=May 4, 2017 |website=Crooked Timber}} a fact the author has confirmed.{{cite web |last1=Palmer |first1=Ada |date=May 11, 2016 |title=The Big Idea: Ada Palmer |url=http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/05/11/the-big-idea-too-like-the-lightning/ |accessdate=May 4, 2017 |website=Whatever |publisher=John Scalzi}} The novel won the 2017 Compton Crook Award for the best first novel in the genre published during the previous year.{{Cite web |title=The Thirty-Five Compton Crook Award Winning Novels from inception in 1983 through 2017 |url=http://www.bsfs.org/CCA/bsfsccwinners2014.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170801202255/http://www.bsfs.org/CCA/bsfsccwinners2014.htm |archive-date=August 1, 2017 |access-date=July 18, 2017 |website=Baltimore Science Fiction Society}} Three more novels followed.

Palmer has announced multiple upcoming projects, including Hearthfire, the first novel in a new historical fiction series about Viking mythology; and The Wrath of Abaia, co-written with Jo Walton.{{Cite web |last=Palmer |first=Ada |date=30 December 2022 |title=End of 2022 Reflections & Plans |url=https://www.patreon.com/posts/end-of-2022-76567326?l=it |access-date=2024-04-24 |website=Patreon}} These novels are scheduled to be published in 2027 and 2025, respectively.

Palmer was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease and polycystic ovary syndrome in 2004, and is a disability activist with a particular focus on self-care and invisible disabilities.{{cite web|last1=Barber|first1=Gregory|title=Ada Palmer and the Weird Hand of Progress|url=https://www.wired.com/story/ada-palmer-sci-fi-future-weird-hand-progress/|website=Wired|date=February 10, 2022 |accessdate=April 24, 2024}}{{cite web|title=Ada Palmer|url=https://thepearsoninstitute.org/globalforum/speaker/ada-palmer|website=The Pearson Institute|accessdate=April 24, 2024}}

The Terra Ignota series has four novels:

1. Too Like the Lightning (2016)
2. Seven Surrenders (2017)
3. The Will to Battle (2017)
4. Perhaps the Stars (2021){{Cite book|title=Perhaps the Stars (Terra Ignota, 4)|isbn=978-0765378064 |last1=Palmer |first1=Ada |date=November 2, 2021 |publisher=Tor Publishing }}

• {{cite book |last1=Palmer |first1=Ada |last2=Hankins |first2=James |title=The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance: A Brief Guide |date=2008 |publisher=L. S. Olschki |location=Firenze |language=en |author-mask=2 |isbn=9788822257697}}
• {{cite book |last1=Palmer |first1=Ada |title=Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance |date= |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge |language=en |author-mask=2 |year=2014 |isbn=9780674725577}}
• {{cite book |last1=Palmer |first1=Ada |title=Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age |date= |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |language=en |author-mask=2 |year=2025 |isbn= 9780226837970}}

• {{cite journal |last1=Palmer |first1=Ada |title=Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |date=2012 |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=395–416 |doi=10.1353/jhi.2012.0023 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/481417 |issn=1086-3222|url-access=subscription }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Palmer |first1=Ada |title=Humanist Lives of Classical Philosophers and the Idea of Renaissance Secularization: Virtue, Rhetoric, and the Orthodox Sources of Unbelief |journal=Renaissance Quarterly |date=October 2017 |volume=70 |issue=3 |pages=935–976 |doi=10.1086/693881 |s2cid=172036932 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/abs/humanist-lives-of-classical-philosophers-and-the-idea-of-renaissance-secularization-virtue-rhetoric-and-the-orthodox-sources-of-unbelief/A577172E980E07783FC6C7B0C0D3EF84 |language=en |issn=0034-4338|url-access=subscription }}

{{reflist}}

{{Commons category|Ada Palmer}}

• [http://cjh.uchicago.edu/issues/spring17/8.4.pdf "Fiction and History: Narratives, Contexts and Imagination"], by Ada Palmer, Jane Dailey, Ghenwa Hayek, Paola Iovene, David Perry. Chicago Journal of History, Spring 2017
• [https://www.adapalmer.com/historian/publications/ Publications] by Ada Palmer

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Category:1981 births

Category:Living people

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:American women academics

Category:American science fiction writers

Category:Bryn Mawr College alumni

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:Writers from Annapolis, Maryland

Category:University of Chicago faculty

Category:20th-century American historians

Category:Historians of the Renaissance

Category:John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer winners

Category:Novelists from Illinois

Category:American women non-fiction writers

Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:Novelists from Washington, D.C.

Category:Filkers

Category:Historians from Maryland